Fish fries are going strong with around 300 - 350 meals being served each Friday night. You can’t beat the price of $7.00 for all you get. Bring a friend or neighbor down and enjoy yourselves here at the post.

Annual elections of officers will be taking place on May 5th. The nominating committee will present their slate of officers at the April 7th meeting and it will be published in the April newsletter. Nominations can come from the floor at the May 5th meeting for any position.

The next post event if the Past Commanders/Past Presidents Dinner on May 17th. Cocktails will be at 5pm and dinner at 6pm. There will be a sign-up sheet at the bar. Many of you will receive personal invitations to receive you continuous membership award that night. We also present the annual

Legionnaire of the Year award at this dinner. You will notice on the back side of this newsletter there is a ballot for choosing someone for this award. The criteria is simple. Choose someone you feel has contributed more that anyone else to this post and the legion over the course of the past year. There will be a ballot box at the bar so that you can drop them off or you can mail them to: American Legion Post #79, 40 East Orvis Street, Massena, NY 13662 Attn: balloting

Any votes sent in by mail will be placed unopened into the ballot box until they are counted . The deadline for this is April 25th.

We are the host post for Memorial Day this year.  The 26th of May will be the official observance and parade. More details will be published in the next newsletter.

The following article was given to me by Grace Cashman and every time I read it I can’t believe it.

OLD GLORY OWNER GIVEN NOISE TICKET. Wind stirs testy flag flap.

DETROIT - To Ray Saelens, the sound of his 12-by-18-foot American flag flapping in the wind was the collective voice of soldiers fighting for freedom.

To his neighbor, it was just a nuisance.

Now Saelens is fighting a ticket he received because his neighbor said the flag made too much noise.

It was 11:45 pm Monday when Chesterfield Township police knocked on Saelens’ door to hand him a ticket. His neighbor, Mark Grucz, had complained the noise from Saelens’ flag was keeping him awake as it flapped in the winds exceeding 40mph.

The police said that under a township code, they had no choice but to ticket him. It’s up to the township’s lawyers to decide whether to pursue it.

Colleen O’Connor, the township’s attorney in the flag flap, declined comment. Grucz could not be reached.

Saelens is frustrated enough to make plenty of comments.

"I think as an American, we have every right to fly the flag." he said. "The noise of that flag is the voices of all the people who died fighting for this flag."

Saelens plans to fight the ticket, which carries a maximum penalty of a $500.00 fine and 90 days in jail. He’ll have plenty of help. Since the word of the ticket spread, he’s received dozens of calls from people outraged that an American flag could lead to a citation.

"I’d rather see a noisy flag flapping in the wind that a burning flag," said Shirley Perry of St. Claire Shores, Mich., a member of VFW Post 6782. Complaining about the noise doesn’t show respect for the flag, she said.

It wasn’t the neighbor’s first complaint about flag noise. Saelens put up a 50-foot flagpole in the garden behind his lakefront home shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. On Feb. 21, a police officer knocked on his door at about 2am to tell him that his neighbor had complained about the flag’s noise, and warned Saelens to keep the flag quiet or risk getting a ticket.

Saelens said he was a Vietnam War protester in the 1960s. Maturity and raising a family made him see the flag in a different light, he said. Now he buys a new flag every three months.

"I’m not taking the flag down," he said Thursday, standing next to his flagpole.